


You Work For The Agency

by S_Knight



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 11:33:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30054798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Knight/pseuds/S_Knight
Summary: A small vignette about the strain of experiencing the cultural event of blaseball indirectly. Content Warning: Second Person, Psychological Horror, Word Salad.
Kudos: 6





	You Work For The Agency

You work for the Agency. 'Work for' isn't entirely accurate, but suitably describing the particular economic arrangement would take much longer and require larger words than 'work for'. The exceptionally humane and open-ended terms aren't necessarily enough to make you enjoy what you do. You can remember several more pleasant jobs. _~~You have always worked for the Agency. You have never not worked for the Agency. Any and all previous 'employment' was simply a performance evaluation.~~_ Of course, you have every right to leave. That much has been made clear to you more than once. _~~You can check out any time you like.~~_ With the fairly explicit implication that the Agency will pull the requisite strings that you just end up working for them again, in a less overt capacity. ~~_But you can never leave._~~ You look at the stack of surveillance tapes on your desk, then at your coffee mug. You grab the coffee first.

The first tape is labeled 'Bonk Jokes-Siesta'. You pause, and against your better judgment, search the Agency's internal archive for 'bonk jokes'. **Blaseball.** You hate blaseball. A death game waged by anything and everything conceivable to the human mind against things distinctly _in_ conceivable, all disguised as a sport. ~~_Splort._~~ You hate that your son plays for the Houston Spies, the Agency-sponsored team. ~~_Your son is in good hands._~~ Still, you're proud of them. You will never not be proud of them. They're your Son.

Reluctantly, you feed the tape into the V-Matic reader. The CRT screen shows a bovid skull atop a small altar, the image nearly static aside from the subtle, pulsing green glow within the eye sockets. The audio is uncomfortably clear, however. "What is it, then? Cactus fruit. We who devour the strangling vine. Subsumed. Eight. Eight. Eight. Rotten. Dripping upon the spiraling path of all that trails down into the well where the sunken-eyed ataxia refuses. Haunted. Five. Five. The game is up. The ashes fall like confetti and smell of daffodils left on a corpse and no one yet contests the gravy train. Twenty nine. Twenty nine. Twenty nine. Twenty nine. Twenty nine." You dutifully transcribe it all.

You work for the Agency. You don't necessarily enjoy what you do.


End file.
